Music, dance, IT, trivia. Not necessarily in that order.

Tag Archives: London

Leicester Square tube station on 12th April 2019: note the lovely lack of adverts

Nothing to do with music, except that I have to go to Leicester Square several times a week on my way to piano playing jobs, so when something changes about the station, I notice it. Recently though, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt calmer on the way up the escalator from the Northern Line, until I realized it was because for the first time I can remember in all the years I’ve travelled on the tube, I could just stay with my own thoughts instead of being distracted by adverts every few centimetres, and I was reminded of the long rant I wrote about the “attentional commons” and New Street Station in Birmingham.

For once, I had a sense of place rather than that feeling that you could be absolutely anywhere, followed by the same adverts wherever you go. Even though it’s nothing but a cavernous white space, you notice the whole space, its shape, volume and colour, and can live in it and enjoy it for a bit, rather than being drawn at face level into the forced intimacy of those advertising panels, that do the opposite—they nobble your sense of who and where you are and what you’re doing. Leicester Square tube station suddenly felt like a place, rather than an advertising space. Other cities do this much better: just look at this station in Prague, Staroměstská, for an idea of how different things could be (and see this page for more pictures and descriptions of the Line A stations in Prague which have similar designs, in different colours)

Staroměstská metro station in Prague

It’s just a guess, but I think that you could probably reduce stress levels exponentially if you were to turn tube stations into places, rather than billboards.

Readers of this blog will know that I have a real thing about mult-tasking, so I’m delighted to read this article on cell-phone accidents in the New Scientist, though not so happy about one of the recommendations. Road signage should be improved so the obstacles to phone users are more obvious ? How about advising phone users to get off their phone if they’re crossing the road?!

The questionnaire was posted to 15,000 Finns, and got just over 6,000 responses. How effective is a self-reporting questionnaire on a topic like this? You have to wonder how many people, Finnish or otherwise, are going to admit that they were texting while driving, or that they walked straight into the path of an oncoming cyclist because they forgot to look out for traffice while they were on the phone.

Cyclists have to live with the knowledge that drivers do things as idiotic as coming out of a junction while texting or dialling and looking down at the phone. It’s the fact that they were looking at their phone that means they didn’t realise how close they were to killing someone, so that’s already a whole group of people who the research won’t capture. Likewise, if pedestrians had any idea what it would feel like if a cyclist + bike crashed into them, they might consider that they had had a ‘near miss’ in research terms. Cyclists know that a pedestrian with a phone is only a half functioning humanoid, and therefore has to be treated as if they are an accident already happening. It would be instructive to conduct a survey of cyclists on one day in London to ask how many near misses they had with someone lost in telephone-space.

Glad to see the new Roadhug campaign to get people to be nice to vulnerable road users by thinking of them as people you know, rather than just anonymous obstacles in your way.

The people who present the most danger to me on my cycle journey to work are Wandsworth mothers on the school run, and by far the worst are those with ‘Baby on Board’ in the back window. The irony is that their oversized tanks which protect the passengers from everything from bulls to car crashes are also the perfect killing machine. When they cut me up, pull out of turnings or open their roadside doors without looking, or leap over speed bumps at 30 mph because they can, I come close to pulling up beside them and shouting through the window ‘with drivers like you on the road, that’ll be your child one day”. Now at least someone else has said it in a much kinder way.

Education: The Age of Uncertainty is an impassioned but factual article in today’s Independent about the effect that library closures are having on the elderly, and in particular on members of the University of the Third Age (U3A).

Ian Searle writes:

The mass closure of public libraries is hitting older people and retired people who want to learn and keep their minds active. The sort of learning that goes on in the University of the Third Age (U3A) – the learning that retired people do because they want to do it, not because they need it for their careers – will be worst hit.

It’s a convincing argument, and I hope that the 250,000 members of U3A lobby government to make it strongly, but the specificity of the statement above bothers me: it blurs the effect that the closures will have on everyone else. As I pointed out in a recent entry, my local library at least was full of young people. Learning and the opportunity to gain access to what libraries have to offer – including a quiet and warm place to think – are important at any age, whether you ‘need it for your career’ or not. The concept of a career in itself is fast becoming an anachronism, as people have to adapt to a very unpredictable and insecure job market.

I put ‘heartwarming’ in quotes, because while it’s very nice for anyone to get £500 worth of something out of the blue, this story rather sickens me. Where is there any mention of libraries? How does such an act benefit the wider community over the long term? That’s what they’re there for: books are expensive, and to spend £500 on them when you’re a child is overkill. You’re not going to like all of them, you might only read most of them once, and if they’re popular books, there’s no reason to buy them new. Giving one child a mass of books looks good on paper, but it’s not half as fantastic as the library services that are already there. And thanks to the way that libraries serve their communities, the chances are Aurelia’s mum could have taken out a load of books in Polish as well – she certainly could in Tooting.

This single benevolent act by Argos benefits one child for a very short time, and in a very limited way (though the benefit to Argos is probably much greater and longer lasting). The Evening Standard story completely disguises the wonderful services that local libraries provide their communities and have done for years. Why would they do that? Why would they continue to propagate a fiction that if you don’t have books at home, then there’s nothing for it except to wait for your local chain store to air-lift a box of them into your living room, when there are magnificent libraries everywhere, at least for the moment?

For as long as I can remember, I have had difficulty concentrating, to the extent that libraries are the only reason I have ever achieved anything. It doesn’t matter how much space I have at home, or how much time and opportunity I have, when I need to concentrate and get any kind of mental work done, I have to go to a library. I’ll buy a day membership to a University library, travel for more than an hour, do anything just for the peace and concentration it affords. The quality of work I do in libraries is so much better than anywhere else, that I have vivid memories of what I read and when, going back decades.

I’m in between courses, so whereas for the last couple of years I could have taken myself to the Institute of Education library, I’m now without anywhere to work. After two years of having an oasis in the middle of Bloomsbury to work in, I’m lost. So on Saturday, I went to Tooting Library, knowing that they have a wonderful quiet study area upstairs. It was the most useful and enjoyable two hours work I’ve done in weeks.

The reason I’m blogging about this is because since the threats to library services started last year, I find myself arguing with people (middle class employed people, by the way) about why we need to keep them. They talk vaguely about ‘everything being digital’ and ‘you can get it all online’ and ‘books are dead’ or reduce the argument to idiotic in the classic sense: ‘they never have anything I want’ or ‘it was closed when I went’.

To reduce the concept of a library to a repository of books is to miss the point, in my view. On Saturday, the study room and IT facilities were full. People were having to book slots and come back later to use the computers (and there are a good number of them). All the seats in the study area were taken. There were a lot of young people, and a lot of old people, and a very broad ethnic mix. A lot of them, like me, had gone there to study, some had gone to read the newspapers. I was so grateful for the quiet, but also for the encouragement you get when you’re in a place where everyone else is trying to do the same thing (people say they go to the gym for the same reason, even though they could work out at home).

Popularity and utility cannot only be measured by the number of books issued in any given year – there is a wider social benefit to a community that comes from the local provision of good IT facilities, or a quiet place for children to do homework.

Well said. It’s not just children either. At a time when more and more people are losing jobs, having to retrain, competing for an ever smaller number of jobs, and have less and less disposable income, libraries are a lifeline. When councillors think they can turn off this particular service, I wonder if they understand it at all, or even know what value it has in their own communities. It is particularly important if the government, as it claims, wants to get young people into work. You have to support that kind of initiative with places to study.

Given the wonderful service that libraries and librarians offer (I don’t think anybody’s put it better than Philip Pullman in his speech about library closures), I find it disgusting that anyone should suggest that volunteers are the answer. I know a number of librarians, and I am trying to envisage how they and I would feel when some financially independent do-gooder turns up at the library and turfs them out of their means of employment, as if their knowledge, experience and education, let alone their need for a job, was insignificant.

Surely before we go down that route, there is an option for some kind of light-touch membership system. If people will pay to go to the gym or belong to the National Trust, can they not pay something to use a library? Keep it free for students, the unemployed, the retired and those on benefits, but offer membership options. The trouble is that sadly, not enough people are convinced that they’re worth fighting for.

To the Peacock Theatre yesterday afternoon to see ENB school’s performance. Well, to be honest, mainly to see my friend Chris Hampson’s new piece for the men, Flow. I always have to remind myself how young these dancers are. When they graduate, musicians can get away with being a bit teenagery, geeky and badly dressed with a slouch even though they can play the oboe rather well, but dancers have to be fully finished human beings as part of what they do, and hell, were they good yesterday.

A single moment stands out and haunts me from the whole show. It was in Ernst Meisner’s joyous piece done to the Rachmaninov two-piano suites. Surrounded by Stravinsky, John Adams & Bach, Rachmaninov on two pianos could have sounded a bit arch and fruity but it didn’t, because the choreography rode the waves of the music so you felt like you were surfing it, not watching it. The single moment in question was when a line of dancers formed stage right, and in unison, turned their heads to watch an imaginary object pass overhead. The ‘imaginary something’ was a musical phrase. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in a ballet, so simple it hurt.

There was something similar in Chris (Hampson’s) piece to the Bach C minor double piano (violin) concerto. A simple flowing arm movement found the music in the music in a hundred ways, and in the slow movement, the soloist turns his head slowly to the back, then looks quickly to the front when the solo instrument enters, as if he has suddenly ‘seen’ the music. A security guard in the audience was so taken with what he had seen that I saw him in the lobby trying out the recurring arm movement in different ways, amazed at what it felt like to move to music. Actually, that didn’t happen, I dreamed it last night, but that’s how intoxicating it was to watch.

I’d never really got into John Adams’ music before seeing Hallelujah Junction at the Linbury, which I loved, and Christopher Tudor’s piece to another Adams’ score made me realise this is my kind of music. Just wish there’d been more of it.

It’s no reflection on Michael Corder’s choreography, which is always musical and sensitive (and the dancers did it excellently), that his piece to Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks annoyed me. It’s not him, it’s Stravinsky, or rather ‘Stravinsky’ (as Taruskin might put it). I’m bored with ‘Stravinsky’, bored with the fawning ideology that presents him as the natural progression of music in the twentieth century, from which there can be no rhythmic going back. I spent the piece trying to work out what annoyed me about it, and concluded that the trouble with music that is consistently unpredictable is that it’s also consistently forgettable. The metrical ambiguity and change and melodic fragmentation leaves you with nothing but a series of passing snapshots, like watching a crowd in an electric storm at night. It’s not even that I particularly dislike the music, it’s just more analogous to a painting than to a dance. It has texture and flashes of colour, but no temporal quality. You can only stand as an observer and take in a moment at a time and then pass to the next one.

And so to Giselle Act II, which was the second half of the programme. Again, nothing against the dancers who did brilliantly, and I think the concept of doing a whole Act of a classic is great. But oh lord, this Giselle of all things needs to be taken apart like an old sports car and put together from scratch. It’s presented as a classic ballet blanc when even in 1841 it was nearer to Phantom of the Opera or Wicked. Giselle is the gothic ballet par excellence, so has enormous resonance for an era obsessed with Twilight, but this production glosses over that in a schoolmarmy, worthy way so that ironically, all the life really is taken out of it – the true corpse is the ballet, not Giselle the person.

There’s also something about listening to a recording of the music (complete with reverberant acoustics that suggest a concert hall a hundred times larger than the Peacock) that gives an auditory unity to the score which ruins the surprise and melodrama of it. I’ve just been re-reading Marian Smith’s excellent Ballet & Opera in the Age of Giselle, and her argument based on utterly convincing evidence, is that we miss the point if we don’t understand how much Giselle borrows from the methods of opera. The score is in many places made up of recitative-like interjections and abrupt changes suggesting verbal drama, but once it’s been engineered and passed through a sound system, and in the absence of life in the form of an orchestra or conductor it is flattened and straightened out into an acoustic sausage that is 80% sawdust. And what on earth is that darn fugue doing in the middle of this production? There are those wilis, being all 19th century and weird and gothic, when suddenly they do a kind of Mark Morris style celebration in the forest to a fugue that is surely the most pointless episode in the history of ballet.

But that’s a side issue, a symptom probably of being in the middle of writing a dissertation on relationships between voice, gesture, music & communication. You notice these things when you look for them. In total, it was a magnificent afternoon, and I was in awe of the dancers’ extraordinary abilities and commitment. It’s for this that I’ve preferred spending my life in the dance world rather than music.

Now you know how I feel about the wonderful work of choreographer Kristen McNally (see previous post), so I’m delighted to see from her just-published blog over at Ballet.cothat she’s keen to put on an evening of her work to date, plus a new piece (yeah, OK, I’m all chuffed that my blog gets a mention too). I’ve told so many people about the Obama piece (if it was on video, I’d make it illegal not to see it on one of my courses) that it just has to have another viewing soon, and I will bring everyone back from their holidays to make them see Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game. There’s an invitation to send suggestions & ideas or join a discussion about it on Ballet.co. Use your democratic rights, make your voice heard and let’s have a McNally evening!

Those of you who know and love Tooting as much as I do, will be appalled to know that there is a planning application to demolish the RACS building at the corner of Hebdon Road & Upper Tooting Road.

This wonderful art deco building is currently home to the Sivayogam Temple, the focus of some of the most visible and wonderful aspects of Tooting’s community life. Remember the August Bank Holiday chariot festivals? They start here. At a meeting held recently to Save the RACS buidling, we were taken upstairs to the third floor to look at the temple, which was quite the most wonderful thing I have seen in Tooting. It’s not just the temple itself, it’s the unique views over the local area that you can see from it.

The plan is to demolish this, and the whole block that it’s in – which would include Dadus and the Kastoori. To me, Dadus symbolises everything that is wonderful about this part of Tooting – freedom from big chain supermarkets, opportunity to buy an enormous variety of things from independent retailers, and shops which are a service to the community. And Tooting without the Kastoori just wouldn’t be Tooting.

Local MP Sadiq Khan is supporting the campaign to save the RACS building. If you’re a local resident and you want to object, follow the advice here about writing/emailing Wandsworth Planning department. But do it QUICK, as the meeting to discuss the plans is imminent.

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Welcome to my new site

A blog about music, IT and dance some of the time, and eclectic personal trivia the rest of the time. I've moved here from www.jsmusic.org.uk, where the software was beginning to fall over, but don't worry, all the old stuff is still there if you're looking for it.
If you're another academic music/dance type, you might be interested in the conferences page, where I list conferences/seminars that I think I might go to (see under 'Pages you might like')